Historians Can't Name Reason City Is Called Newport News

June 25, 1996|By MARK ST. JOHN ERICKSON Daily Press

NEWPORT NEWS — No one worries much about the origin of the name of Warwick County.

Adm. Sir Robert Rich, the second Earl of Warwick and a stockholder in the Virginia Company, gave his name to the Warwick River in 1627 and to the former county - originally known as Warwick River Shire - seven years later.

But ask historians about the name Newport News and you could start a squabble. As early as 1867, scholars speculated - sometimes comically - about the curious moniker.

Hugh Blair Grigsby, writing after the Civil War, contends the name came from Capt. Christopher Newport, who intended to commemorate both himself and his friend Sir William Newce, the knight marshal of Virginia, after the stalwart sea captain settled in the Old Dominion.

But as later historians, including C.W. Evans, have pointed out, Newport died on a voyage to the East Indies more than four years before Newce arrived in the New World. And despite five expeditions to Virginia, the restless navigator never set down roots long enough to call any part of it home.

Other theorists, including historian Alexander Crosby Brown and former William and Mary President Lyon Gardiner Tyler, give the credit to early settler Daniel Gookin, who arrived from Newce's Town, Ireland, sometimes known as Port Newce, in the winter of 1621. They say he named his property New Port Newce for both his old home and either Newce or his brother Thomas.

Too bad, Evans remarks, in a 1946 essay, that the name "Newportes Newes" crops up in the records of the Virginia Company in 1619 - about two years before Gookin's arrival. That's also too soon, the essay argues, for either of the Newce brothers to have coined the name to honor themselves.

Another view contends that the name derives from the expression "Newport Ness," meaning Newport Point, though no one has produced an early record or map that bears this quaint Old English expression. Far more plausible is yet another theory connected with one of Newport's most important voyages.

Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, the former Union commandant of Fort Monroe, may have suggested it first in an 1867 letter. He argues that Newport commanded the relief fleet that met the starving colonists in 1610, shortly after they abandoned Jamestown and started to sail back to England.

News of the arrival, he says, combined naturally with the captain's name, resulting in the commemorative expression, "Newport's News."

Later sources have debunked this explanation, pointing out that Newport, who was shipwrecked off the island of Bermuda during his fourth voyage, arrived in Jamestown more than two weeks before Lord De La Warr's relief fleet. That would put him among the colonists leaving the island instead of being the bearer of good news.

Still, as historian John Quarstein points out, Newport got there first, and he may have provided some hope, even if soon forsaken, regarding the resupply expedition.

Capt. John Smith, writing in his "Generall Historie of Virginia," makes a point of saying that Newport's most significant contribution to the colony was "bringing the newes."

How that all fits together, Quarstein says, is something no one will ever know for certain. "But it makes too much sense," he argues.

"And remember how it's spelled - `Newport's Newes.' That's got to tell you it had something to do with Newport."